Posted on by Coaster Kings

Cedar Point – Late July 2020

Alexander: With 2020 being as stressful as it is, we figured a Platinum Pass and a trip to Ohio would be a nice way to help cope. Our Cedar Point visit wasn’t perfect, but we’re grateful to have been able to go at all.

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Sean’s arms are big enought to cary all of CP’s operational shortcomings!

Ok, but seriously, we realize the park is doing everything they can with what they’ve got. Staffing this place is a nightmare under normal conditions, so I consider it a miracle they even opened at all.

We got boarding passes for the Intamins before hitting some other rides. Steel Vengeance didn’t open until 7:15pm and the queue closed to guests at 7:30pm so that that staff could (hopefully) go home at around 8pm. Needless to say, this put a damper on a lot of peoples’ visits (but not ours, cuz, with all due respect, Steel Vengeance isn’t what we go to CP for).

Rougarou, our favorite CP B&M, is running great as usual. The queue was a longer wait than we expected (45min), but with Steel Vengeance and other rides down for large periods at a time, and boarding passes leaving the queue for Millennium Force empty much of the day, long standby queues for less popular rides was commonplace.

Speaking of Millennium Force, we were pleased to find the ride running better for us than on our 2019 visit. The staff was also kind enough to accommodate our back seat request despite the park “not technically doing that” this year. 

While our plan was to do a day-and-a-half each at Cedar Point and Kings Island, a forecast for all-day thunderstorms on our KI day persuaded us to do CP for just the one day. As a result, we missed out on several lower-priority coasters like Iron Dragon, Corkscrew, Blue Streak, and Cedar Creek Mine Ride. 

However, we consider ourselves very lucky with what we did get on. Top Thrill Dragster was closed when we walked up to the entrance, but it re-opened just as we were about to walk away. After our amazing last row ride (again, thank you to the staff), the ride broke down just one dispatch later and remained closed for several hours. 

Maverick‘s biggest challenge of the day wasn’t breakdowns, but CP’s rigorous sanitization routine.

Sanitizing all 6 Maverick trains every half hour is a tedious process, and with the queue roughly an hour all day, most guests got to wait thru the cleaning routine at least twice before riding (on a positive note, our second Maverick ride of the day just before park close was a walk-on).

The sanitizing regimen is our biggest complaint of the current Cedar Fair operation. Various Disney and Universal resorts have opted for the much more efficient forced-hand-sanitizer-before-riding approach, and we hope to see all operating parks adopt this practice as well. 

Much to our delight, Gemini was running both sides today. Not only was Sean now able to get his blue side credit, but we all were able to enjoy a very close race! It was neck-and-neck the whole way before red side pulled out a narrow victory. 

Unfortunately, operational woes plagued the funky racing classic, reducing the ride to red-only operation for a majority of the day, save for the couple hours midday where both sides were down. Fortunately both sides ran simultaneously from about dinnertime thru the end of the night. 

As pleased as we are that KI’s Vortex trains went to Carowinds to run on the lovely Carolina Cyclone, I can’t help but wonder why they weren’t sent to Cedar Point for Corkscrew, whose ride experience suffers from the use of Generation 1 Arrow trains. 

Fortunately it’s still a great looking ride – especially the paint job on the trains.

Corkscrew‘s normal luster was slightly hindered by CP’s lack of flower gardens this year – we’re guessing seasonal landscaping was a victim of budget cuts. 

We’ll leave you with this random shot of Tiki Twirl and the Ferris Wheel that I took while coasting on a smooth White Claw buzz. Thank you, CP, for coming thru for our hard seltzer habit. 

That concludes our Cedar Point coverage for now (though we’re planning another Ohio trip at the end of this month). In the mean time, get caught up with our most recent trip reports below:

 

8 Replies to “Cedar Point – Late July 2020”

  1. Hand santizer doesnt help respiratory droets than land on harnesses from screaming/yelling/coffing/sneezing. Therefore the trains are sanitized at 30 min intervals. Masks block some but not all of those.

    Reply

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